My Library

I� must be confessed that this was a singular story, and smelled very strongly of either Hartzmountainism or its equivalent, imagination. He continued his story thus: “I did not know all this at five years old, of course. The only thing I did fully comprehend was the loss of my mother—her strange silence —the woeful look of those who hugged my little head and said ‘Poor child!’ I tried hard to be manly and not cry, as they bade me, but it was useless, and the tears welled up in floods from my poor little childish heart. Have you ever lost a mother? “As I nestled on the bed where she lay so very still, I asked the bystanding mourners where the talking part of my mother had gone to? If she would never talk to, love and pet me any more? and they said ‘Never more,’ and they repeated that dreadful but untrue refrain till my poor heart was full almost to bursting, with its load and pressure of grief; and then I threw myself upon her dear body, and cried till tears refused to flow, for I had lost my mother, sirs—I had lost my mother! Would that I could weep now as I